United States as the sole country claiming to be civilized which disregards the proprietary rights of foreign authors. 2. Greatly extending and improving the field for native authorship. 3. As the result of the two preceding benefits, raising the moral and intellectual tone more or less of the whole people. We may add, as a fourth benefit, the placing of the whole publishing trade of the country on a sounder footing.
The Popular Science Monthly has, from the first, placed itself on the right side of this question by consistently contending for the principle of international copyright, and that without any such reserves in regard to magazine literature as some members of Congress are now disposed to make, and such as it might be supposed to be in the interest of a periodical reprinting more or less from foreign sources might be thought to favor. Our interest in the subject, therefore, is not new-born, but is merely the continuation of that we have both felt and expressed whenever the question has been prominently before the public. In supporting the bill now before Congress, we do not wish to be understood as claiming that it is a perfect measure, or that it may not, after some experience of its working, be found to need amendment. All that can fairly be asked of a new law is that it should affirm a sound principle, and should provide the means for carrying that principle into more or less effective and satisfactory operation. This, however, may be claimed for the Copyright Bill—that it is no hole or corner measure, no product of selfish machinations against the general interest, but that all it aims at is for the public good.
MATTHEW ARNOLD.
Matthew Arnold, though pre-eminently a man of letters, was one who in many points occupied common ground with the men of science. He had that openness of spirit and that constant desire to search out causes which are among the best characteristics of the scientific temper. He had turned aside as completely from catastrophism in human history as modern geologists have done in regard to the physical history of the globe, or modern biologists in regard to the development of life. He may at times have weaved rather fanciful theories of his own, but he was always willing to bring them to the tests of fact and logic. Though not lacking in self-confidence, he was far from being dogmatic, and be invariably treated opponents not only with respect, but with unfailing kindliness. He had, perhaps, an inadequate appreciation of the value of certain lines of scientific investigation, and, conversely, he may have formed an exaggerated estimate of the value of the literary element in education; but every man must be allowed, as the French say, to preach his own saint; and Matthew Arnold's preaching had always something instructive in it. No man, it is almost needless to say, could write more interestingly than he; and this was doubtless because, with his fine gifts, he took life seriously, and applied his mind earnestly to some of its greatest problems. Allowing for all deficiencies and for a few mannerisms, he was a sound and wholesome thinker, and a useful man in his generation. There can be no doubt that, in his own way, he powerfully aided the great scientific movement of the age. No mind that fell under Matthew Arnold's influence could be closed against scientific conceptions, or could to any serious extent undervalue the work of science; and many must have owed to his vivacious pen their first realization of the extent to which modern thought had invaded and dismantled the fortresses of ancient prejudice. By his poetry, too, he succeeded, perhaps without intending it, in showing that modern thought is not destitute of the instinct for beauty, and that it lends itself in an especial manner to the delineation of the beauty of righteousness. We are not sure that
